A Disappointing Continuation

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"Dirchs wilde Kurdistan" or "Wild Kurdistan" is a West German / Spanish co-production from 1965, so this film already had its 50th anniversary last year. German audiences in the 1960s were truly crazy for these Karl May film adaptations and writer and director Franz Josef Gottlieb gave them exactly what they wanted. He is known for having a good touch with what the masses want to see as he also worked on many Edgar Wallace films and some of the German semi-known soft-core porn movies. But back to this one here. At some point, people realized Lex Barker was too big of a star to play second fiddle to Pierre Brice in the Winnetou movies, so he got his own Kara Ben Nemsi franchise. This film here follows "Der Schuch". Unfortunately, the film has not aged very well by today's standards. The story is predictable and the film lacks shades completely in terms of who's good or who's evil. It's either one or the other. And Barker's character is presented as the ultimate man. Every woman desires him, the bad guys fear him, his friends admire him. He is basically God in a human's body and it gets annoying pretty quickly. Barker is not the worst actor, it is mostly about the way the character was written. Other than him, this 100-minute movie includes a handful of actors that are known from other Karl May adaptations. But it is all too generic and stereotypical and the way the story was written with the main antagonist and everything cannot make up for that. I don't recommend the watch.

Kara Ben Nemsi (Lex Barker) and his friend the sheik hear that the sheik's son was taken prisoner by the evil Machredsch of Mossul. On their way to his rescue, they face many dangerous adventures and meet interesting characters such as the constantly drunk Mütesselin (Werner Peters, hilarious!), the unshakable butler Archie (Chris Howland) and the beautiful dancer Ingdscha (Marie Versini).Mostly solid, colorful fun, but not without flaws. Originally it was planned to shoot this picture at its historical location in Turkey, but for organizational reasons it was decided to make it in Spain instead (source: M. Petzel). „Durchs wilde Kurdistan" was not huge, but successful enough to have a sequel following in the same year: „Im Reich des silbernen Löwen".

This adventure is more tentious than the "Schut", although Gottlieb is not the considerably better director than R. Siodmak (Schut), but the story is somehow predictable and this is fighting with its suspense. It is worth watching the landscape, that is great.